The
World of Psychic Phenomena As I Came to Know It

People come
to a deeply felt conviction of the importance of psychical research from very
different starting points. It can be, as in the case of Gardner Murphy, that
during the formative years one encounters inspiring figures who have had the
courage to acknowledge publicly the reality of these phenomena. In Murphy's day
it was William James and Walker Franklin Prince. His reading of Myers and
others further fired his imagination and led him to his life-long devotion to
the subject.

I came to
it through a different route, namely, by a direct encounter with almost all the
classical phenomena of the séance as described in the literature of the late
19th and early 20th century. It came about in this way:

Sometime in
the Fall of 1932 a college friend, Leonard Lauer, told me of a series of
strange events that had happened to a friend of his named Gilbert Roller.
Leonard and I were about sixteen at the time and just beginning our sophomore
year. We were both taking pre-med courses and considered ourselves budding
scientists. What Leonard confided to me that day was the beginning of my
involvement with psychical research.

He told me
that Gilbert at about the age of eleven or twelve was the focus around which
poltergeist phenomena occurred. Small objects were thrown about the room, watch
crystals were broken, writing done with a lipstick appeared on mirrors, etc.
Leonard learned of these events several months prior to his talk with me. It led
him to look up the literature on psychical research and then, along with
Gilbert and two others, to an attempt to replicate some of the phenomena he was
reading about. They met weekly and had a series of séances in which they sat
around a table in the dark. According to Leonard there was a response in the
form of tilting and some movement of the table. Leonard told me about this in
the hope of starting the sittings again. I was interested and agreed to join in
what turned out to be a regular Saturday night commitment to psychic phenomena.
Leonard suggested some books on the subject to which I promptly reacted. My
readings included Hudson's "The Law of Psychic Phenomena", Myers,
Lodge, Lombroso and Schrank-Notzing. I must have been a "sheep" from
the beginning because the reading enthralled me, particularly since, the more I
read the more impressed I was with how many great figures of the last century
had ventured into the field.

So much for
my beginning exposure to the literature. More exciting was what happened over
almost a two year period (1932-1933) as a consequence of a dedicated devotion
to Saturday night séances. From time to time the circle increased as we drew
friends into it. There were six "regulars ".

On several
occasions I have tried to write an account of what happened. I never succeeded
to my complete satisfaction. To understand its meaning and impact one must take
into account the unique circumstances under which it evolved. A group of
teenagers, some in college, some not, began to meet regularly every Saturday
night. They persisted at sitting, not for a month or two but for nearly two
years with very few missed sessions. We stayed with it despite an unpredictable
mix of successes and failures, spurred on by the slow evolution of ever more startling
and exciting manifestations. Starting with uncertain knocks and tilting of a
small end table around which we sat in the dark holding hands, we ended up
after several months with a bridge table levitating and dancing around the
room. The next step was the identification of the force involved as intelligent
through coded rappings on the table. Spurred on by our continued reading we
went on to produce photographs on unexposed plates which, in turn, led to
successful experiments in thought photography. By this time we were informed
that we had made contact with a doctor named Bindelof, who had died in 1919 but
who was still interested in healing people. We arranged a very striking
communication system with him. We would sit around the end table, clasping each
others hands at the edge of the table, while a pencil and paper rested on a
lower shelf of the table. Soon after the lights were out we would hear the
pencil writing very fast for a few seconds and then it would be put down with a
loud noise. This was a signal for us to turn on the lights and read the
message. The messages were answers to our many naive questions about the nature
of the phenomena, about life after death, and about what we had to do to
facilitate the force involved. Stopping at nothing we went on to try for
materialization. The nearest we got was when all of us were touched
consecutively and then at the same time by what felt like human fingers. Our
efforts at healing through Dr. Bindelof's ministrations were not remarkable
except for a few strange and noteworthy effects, as when a very nearsighted
person felt that fingers were manipulating his eyeballs from within the orbit.

The
question then as now is how genuine were all these effects. Those of us who
formed the core group were deeply convinced that the effects were genuine
although the interpretation of the effects differed (basically, whether or not
we were into the issue of survival). We could point to certain objective
evidence for the reality of the phenomena we witnessed, aside from the trust we
had in each other and the powerful subjective impact of the experience. Despite
our youth and inexperience we did take reasonable precautions at each phase of
the process and were quite careful in our handling of the photographic plates.
Because of certain effects that were generated at the last minute prior to
getting an image on an unexposed plate I was certain that the plate could not
have been doctored beforehand. During Dr. Bindelof's helping phase we would put
questions to him and get the answers back as written messages. Since we were at
an age where many vexing problems beset us we asked for and received permission
to think rather than ask questions out loud. I can testify in my own case to
the specificity and relevance of the answer.

In a
cursory way this touches on the highlights of the experience. Twenty-nine years
after the experience I managed to bring the core group together to spend an
entire day reminiscing about the experience, our varying interpretations of it
and the impact it had had on our lives. That is a story in itself. In my case
it resulted in a life-long fascination with psychic phenomena and a deep
conviction about its significance. None of us were tricksters or magicians and
I doubt whether any of us were clever enough to have carried off a hoax over a
two year period, displaying such a remarkable variety of phenomena, without
evoking suspicion. As adults we were divided into two camps -- those who took
the phenomena at face value believed that Dr. Bindelof was who he professed to
be -- a dead physician still interested in helping humanity -- and who believed
explicitly in the account he gave of life after death, and those who held to a
minority view, offered by Leonard and myself, a view that looked upon the phenomena
as paranormal but shaped by the unique circle we formed and its endurance in so
dedicated a way over the two year period. We felt the emotional turmoil each of
us was in during this time of adolescence had played a significant role. More
specifically, growing out of unmet needs in our homes was our individual and
collective need for a benevolent, all-powerful father figure. Dr. Bindelof was
seen as our creation, someone responsive to our needs, helping us when we were
in trouble and bringing us to incredible levels of excitement through the
enormous power at his disposal. In our opinion (Leonard and mine) there was no
objective evidence that we were dealing with a real person who had died.
Nevertheless, like the others, we were and remain convinced that all that did
occur, including the mysterious writings, were genuine psychic phenomena. The
core group continued to hold reunions yearly for four years, checking and
cross-checking our memories, evaluating the residually available data and
writing up our individual accounts.

Having had
a career both in parapsychology and in psychiatry I know how easy it is to be
fooled, how easily subjective factors and belief systems can influence
perception, but my conviction about the reality of the experience is unshaken.
It rests on what happened as a group experience at that time, what happened to
me personally, the artifacts that have endured, and my now fifty year knowledge
of the key participants. Over the years I have witnessed on a smaller scale
many effects that, in some measure, were congruent with what we produced in the
early thirties, e.g., the thought photography reported by Eisenbud, the table
moving experiments of Batcheldor and the manifold effects of Kulagina which
included psychokinesis as well as effects on photographic plates and organ
systems.

In the
years that followed the Bindelof experience I made three abortive attempts to
reproduce the kinds of physical effects I had known earlier. The first was in
1944 at which time I was stationed in an army hospital outside of Paris. I
managed to impress three of my fellow medical officers with the story of my
earlier experiences. On three or four occasions we spent the evening
intermittently sitting around a table in the dark with hand contact. Nothing happened.

In 1946,
while on terminal leave from the army, one of the first things I did on getting
back to New York was to visit the American Society for Psychical Research
which, at that time, was located on 34th Street. It was there that I first met
Gardner Murphy. Within ten minutes of our meeting responding to his openness
and interest, the whole story of the Bindelof experience came pouring out. A
year later I located two of the main participants, Gilbert and Leonard. This
led to a series of evening sittings with Gardner, which took place at my
office. The late Emanuel Schwartz, a psychologist, also attended. Again nothing
happened.

A final
attempt took place with the entire core group on the occasion of our second
annual meeting in 1961. Nothing happened. You can't t go home again.

Whatever
happened in the thirties happened in relation to a powerfully charged emotional
atmosphere. We were inspired, almost messianic in our zeal to bring Dr.
Bindelof's message to the world. Different as we were from each other we were
all going through inner turmoil of the quality and intensity that only
adolescents know. We were not the most stable group of adolescents, if that
term has any meaning for that age group.

The
distillate of that experience has stayed with me throughout the years. It
biased me toward a concern with the emotional field involved in the pursuit of
psi, to the importance of an open attitude, to the responsiveness of psi
effects to the existence of genuine human needs and finally, to the importance
of dedicating oneself into the pursuit of the phenomenon over time. Gross psi
effects require a long incubation period. This
developmental aspect is difficult to bring into the laboratory. An
optimal emotional environment is also difficult to bring into the laboratory. I
would characterize that environment as one of need, tension, heightened
interest, belief, expectation and commonality of goal.

The closest
I have come to replication this kind of atmosphere with some measure of success
was in the recent studies in dream sharing conducted at the ASPR from 1978 to
1984. Here, again, a developmental effect was observed but in no way comparable
to the Bindelof effects. Limited as it was to the realm of effects noted in
dreams it was nevertheless clearly apparent and convincing to those of us who
participated.

In some
ways my own parapsychological journey paralleled the domiciliary moves of the
ASPR. At the time of the Bindelof experience Leonard and I visited its
headquarters at the old Hyslop house on 23rd Street. There we sought to bring
our "discoveries" to a broader scientific public. We unburdened
ourselves to Bligh Bond, then the secretary of the Society. He listened
politely but, as I recall didn't seem interested or encouraging.

My next
encounter with the ASPR was in 1946 when the Society was located on E.34th
Street. Here I was introduced to Gardner Murphy, Laura Dale, George Hyslop,
Lydia Allison and the other dedicated souls who were working against great odds
to keep up scientific interest in psychic phenomena.

The Society
then moved to Fifth Avenue and 69th Street. Psychical research became
parapsychological research. Under Gardner's direction Laura and others were
busy following through on some of the lines of research being opened up under
Dr. Rhine's direction at Duke University. This didn't displace an open interest
in the way the laity experienced the paranormal and attention was paid to
collecting spontaneous case material. During this time Gardner and I along with
students he brought from City College met weekly at my office for experiments
using hypnosis for the ESP transfer of free drawings. It was also at this time
that Laura and I initiated our pilot exploration of dream telepathy.

This took
place before our knowledge of the REM state and its relationship to dreaming.
Using a machine called the dormiphone we could be awakened at any pre-set time
during the night to try to capture a dream. Laura and I alternated as subject
and agent. We met every Friday to compare our dreams and diary report. The
results were encouraging and led ultimately to the experimental investigation
of dream telepathy at Maimonides Hospital. This coincided with the move of the
ASPR to its current location. Earlier, Karlis Osis and Douglas Dean joined with
me and, through the good graces of Eileen Garrett and the Parapsychology
Foundation we carried out very promising pilot studies. When Stan Krippner
joined the laboratory at Maimonides we were able finally to transform these
initial efforts into a series of systematic and carefully designed experiments.

Sometime in
1948 Gardner and I discussed the creation of a Medical Section of the ASPR.
This was at a time when there was a spirit of interest among psychoanalysts and
psychiatrists in the clinical significance of the telepathic dream. Jan
Ehrenwald had published his first book on the subject. Jule Eisenbud had
published an article in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
Bob Laidlaw had been working with Eileen Garrett. For my part, though I had not
published anything on the subject, I had been meeting with Gardner for weekly
lunches and shared my excitement at being at the receiving end of telepathic
dreams from patients.

The Medical
Section meetings which took place about once a month beginning in March of 1948
and extending over the next five years were a memorable experience in many
ways. Aside from consolidating lasting friendships (we were few against the
many) sharing clinical psi experiences resulted in much cross fertilization of
ideas and, I believe, acted as a kind of supraordinate intangible influence
that stimulated the rate of occurrence of psi effects between our patients and
ourselves.

There is a
special excitement generated when psi effects crop up in an analytic session.
There is a heightened intensity of interest, a sense of discovery, an awareness
of moving into uncharted areas. At the same time there is that strange feeling
of someone able to see through you, seeing all the things you so carefully
contrive to hide from view.

At our
meetings we were mutually supportive rather than critical. There was a common
base of acceptance based on commonly agreed upon objective criteria and the
deeply felt uncanny quality of the experience. Ehrenwald had an unending series
of striking examples. Eisenbud was bold enough and skillful enough to introduce
the psi hypothesis to the patient in working though the dynamics of the
experience. I was even brash enough to come out of the psychic closet and share
my earlier college experience with the group. One of the unforeseen and
far-flung consequences of that sharing was Eisenbud's ready response to the
thought photography of Ted Serios.

Teaching
and working with dreams over four decades I have been impressed with how much
more we don't know than how much we do. Despite all the doors that have been
opened since the resurgence of interest in dreams in the fifties that interest
has been pursued in a narrow way. We know more about the neurophysiology of
sleep and dreams, more about some of the psychological features of the REM
state, a new perspective on the phylogenesis of dreaming, but two significant
areas remain largely unexplored -- the psi dimension and the sociological
dimension. Nor would it surprise me if we were some day to note a relationship
between these two that may have a bearing on their relative neglect. As an
example consider this. The most striking psychological product of the
industrial revolution is the view of the individual as an ahistoric discrete
entity, an atomic structure bouncing off other atomic structures. This is far
from the optimal arrangement for the emergence of the human potential for
moral, emotional and creative fulfillment. The price we pay for this is a
gradual increase in social entropy in parallel with the possibility of nuclear
annihilation.

There are
sufficient clues about the way psi operates to speculate about the relationship
of this state of affairs to psi. In the therapeutic
relationship we witness one form of psi, its availability as an emergency measure
in the interest of holding on to some vital form of contact. At the
other extreme, laboratory studies have formed the healthier personality
structure as more apt to come up with psi effects. Isolated reports on
primitive tribes go further and suggest the appearance of psi abilities as a
more or less natural communicative medium. For the most part these are also
forms of social organization where there is much more social cohesiveness than
the kind of individualism and discreteness that characterizes modern society. Psi then seems to be an emergency mechanism for the
individual adrift in a technological society and an available and useful form
of adaptation in societies that have escaped that evolutionary route.
Perhaps psi in its full and palpable form will never appear in industrialized
societies as they are now organized except in tiny quantitative doses, sporadic
anecdotal accounts and occasional freakish outbursts.

The future
of psychic research is an intriguing question. In the wake of two recent
centennial celebration (the S.P.R.and the A.S.P.R.) this question looms larger
than ever.

We seem to
have moved through two rather distinct epochs. The earlier one was
characterized by direct observation of gross effect,
best exemplified in the pursuit of the great mediums, and the more recent one
where, with the benefit of advanced scientific techniques, paranormal effects
could be teased out on a quantitative basis.

Each
approach was a product of its age. Each reflected certain prevailing trends,
the reaction to a materialist view of man in the case of the first and the
belief in the power of the scientific approach as it has been derived from the
biological and physical sciences. I think the time is approaching when we will
have to reorient ourselves to a third phase. Without a broader conceptual frame
of reference I don't think that staying with approaches developed in the second
phase will significantly alter the picture. Progress may continue in the same
desultory way but I don't think the field will emerge successfully from its
closeted existence into full public and scientific view as a central issue for
our time.

I can offer
only a rather speculative vision of what that third phase might look like.

Just as the
first phase was shaped as a reaction to a particular view of man so, too, was
the second phase. This time, however, the situation was a bit more complex, and
contradictory trends emerged that have persisted throughout the second phase.
The same anti-materialist and ill-concealed dualistic bias shaped the founding
of the new science of parapsychology. There was, however, the realization that in order for further progress to be made there had to be
interest and acceptance by orthodox science. The scientific method had
to be applied with a rigor and fastidiousness that surpassed ordinary
standards.

A measure
of repeatability did result, by no means a minor accomplishment. At the same
time progress was frustratingly slow and in no way brought us any closer to
understanding the essential nature of the phenomena under investigation.

If the
third phase is to introduce a fundamental difference it would seem to me that
the central issue would revolve about a question that exists independent of
psi, namely, the adequacy of the scientific method as it has evolved, to
address issues that have the kind of complex interactive and social components
that characterize human affairs. In these matters we have to note the extent to
which our scientific pursuit of psi has followed rather than challenged the leitmotif
of individualism that colors both art and science in the twentieth century.
This individualistic orientation in its culmination in a present epoch
characterized by fragmentation of the human species in every way has brought us
to the point of facing an uncertain survival for the entire species.

David Bohm,
a distinguished theoretical physicist, taking note of this state of affairs,
feels that even our approach to physical phenomena is basically wrong and
should be revised. Instead of emphasis on the discreteness
of manifest entities in the physical world the emphasis should be placed on the interconnectedness of all matter and its
rootedness in a common ground of being which he refers to as the implicate order.

In
retrospect the second phase, despite its many constructive features, had a kind
of will-of-the-wisp quality to it. It was like chasing
a phantom with a slide rule. Sometimes we got close enough-to take a few
measurements but never did we get near enough to penetrate to the heart of the mystery.

My
projection for the third phase would be to start with the most pressing need
facing humanity today. How do we close ranks and re-experience ourselves as
members of a single species? How do we overcome the fragmentation and begin to
foster compassion and communion, neither of which can flourish in the pursuit
of a specious individualism?

What has
all this got to do with psi? Psi effects seem to occur (as I interpret my own
experience) either when external factors impede significant contact or when
internal factors result in the impedance. I believe this to be the essential
nature of the psi capacity despite the fact that at times trivial items may be
the ones being picked up.

What are
the systems in which psi emerges as an integral part, and can they lend
themselves to careful study? There have been three basic approaches to psi and
I think all of them suggest a systemic effect; the laboratory approach, the
clinical approach and the anecdotal approach.

In the case
of the laboratory approach we decide on the limits
of the system we wish to study and find ourselves enmeshed in a supraordinate
system which, by adding its own influence, contaminates
the original system. The experimenter effect would be an example. In the case
of the clinical approach all that has been written about it points to an
interactive effect whereby psi capacities are mobilized as a kind of covert
contact between two or more individuals. In the case of the anecdotal material
it is as if, under the pressure of the emotional stress of a given situation,
the covert contact becomes overt regardless of whether it is accepted as such
or not.

If reports
of psi communication among aborigines are correct it might prove a fertile
natural system to explore. My own experience, notably that of my youth and,
more recently, in group dream work, has convinced me that psi can evolve in
natural systems when there is an interest in
psi and a persistence in its pursuit. Essential
to such an endeavor would be the humility and
sensitivity to follow where psi effects lead us to instead of what I sometimes
think is a certain degree of scientific arrogance in thinking we can trap psi
by one of our ingenious experimental designs.

My work
with dream telepathy is a good example. The most exciting and stimulating time
was during the free-wheeling pilot phase. As we then shifted to designs to
prove rather than to investigate dream telepathy the results, while they cam
through statistically, were divorced from an understanding of the human context
from which they arose. Finally, when the big experimental push was made to
prove dream telepathy under the impetus of an NIMH grant the result was a
dismal failure. All this cannot be accounted for by the looseness of the
controls initially and the subsequent tightening of them but, rather that as the goal became proof rather than understanding
something was lost that otherwise would have given personal meaning to each
discrete psi event that cropped up.

When it
comes to human affairs the search for knowledge must include an aesthetic
component, i.e., it has to be concerned with questions of fit, order, and the
role of intuition. It no longer is possible to package truth in the form of
cold impersonal facts. In the way people deal with each other truth registers
as a felt response aside from the question of whether it is attended to or not,
admitted or denied. In gathering facts about the physical world this aspect of
the truth is often set aside as irrelevant. In the
truly innovative scientific projections, however, they often start with an
intuitive flash that is aesthetically illuminating.

In my
opinion the third phase will be more productive if it can find a way to align
itself with this aesthetic component without sacrificing the vigor of
scientific exploration.

What are
some of the implications of this point of view for the third phase?

1. We have to define any experiment in psi as
embedded in a series of systems - ordinate and supraordinate system
relationships. This means attending to the question of which system is
implicated in the psi event, the system we are attempting to manipulate or the
larger supraordinate system of which the system is a part.

2. If the supraordinate system is implicated the
effect has to be seen as a system effect rather than, as heretofore considered,
the experimenter effect." This is so because the experimenter is part of
the system supraordinate to the designated experimental system one where his
motivation, needs and ways of interacting with others are all brought into play.

3. The recent theoretical contributions of David
Bohm have highlighted these system relations which arise from and lead to the
emphasis on the interconnectedness of all things.

The
importance of Bohm's thinking lies in the radical shift in emphasis from our
way of taking for granted the discreteness of things to realigning our sights
so that more attention is paid to field phenomena that betray this essential
interconnectedness. Certainly in the pursuit of psi effects much is lost if
field effects aren't taken into account and it may even be that we have made a
difficult situation even more difficult by this neglect. Gardner Murphy touched
on this in his approach to the survival problem. William Roll also did in his
analysis of poltergeist phenomena.

Since most
experimental efforts involve interacting human beings and each carries along
their own supraordinate system the field
approach can become quite complicated and removed from the ideal goal of
controlling definable variables. It seems to me that one way of approaching
this problem is to devote some effort to cultivating psi in as naturalistic a
setting as possible and, if successful, then to begin to explore and identify
the field effects at the various levels of organization at which they occur -
physical, biological, psychological, small group, larger group, etc. To add to
the power of the endeavor we would include a temporal field by planning studies that develop over time. The
complexity of the field may very well require an interdisciplinary approach. Such an approach has been conspicuously
lacking in parapsychological research. Whatever other disciplines have been
involved have either made contributions shaped by their own field of interest
or have simply carried over and applied techniques originating in
parapsychological laboratories to their own specialty.

Drawing on
my own experience I feel there is much to be gained from a slow, free-wheeling developmental approach
over an extended period of time. Two experiences almost forty years
apart have convinced me of this. The first goes back to 1948 when, under
Gardner Murphy's guidance I started, at first quite informally, a series of
meetings with Lois Murphy in which she was the percipient and I the agent,
using free drawings. We met weekly at my office for over a year before it was
terminated by the Murphy's move to Topeka. During this time I had the feeling
that I was working with someone who was slowly beginning to get in touch with
her psi capacity and learning how to move into that state of mind that led to
some degree of conviction around the target. She would let herself go into what
she described as a free-wheeling stage which, in effect, was letting her
thoughts and feelings go off in any direction at all. This was then followed by
what she referred to as being in gear, during which a number of images would
come to mind that, varied as they might be, left her feeling that they were
clustering around the target. There were many failures but some of the
successes were spectacular.

The second
example occurred more recently. In the course of several years of dream sharing
in a small group that met weekly, one of the participants, Barbara Shelp, did
develop psi ability in a rather striking way. This happened to someone who had
no prior first-hand experience with psi. These effects appeared in her dreams
and were manifested in distinctly different ways and in relation to other
members of the group that reflected something of the specifics of her differing
relationship with each. She also began to be aware of the increasing role that
psi began to play in her personal life outside of the group. While each of us
experienced something from time to time that we would informally accept as psi
it became obvious that something rather special was happening with Barbara.
There was something analogous to what we were doing with dreams to what the
Toronto group did in conjuring up Phillip and Batcheldor's approach to table
movement. It provided the combination of spontaneity, informality, deep
interest, a cohesive focus and a temporal dimension. All of this would make for
useful ingredients in the approach to the third phase. In a sense the third
phase would be a replay of the first phase but at a higher level and utilizing
more sophisticated psychological, group and technological techniques.

In sum I
have had four close encounters with psi, first at a personal level in the early
Bindelof experiences, and occasionally thereafter (a few sporadic dreams that struck me as either telepathic or
precognitive);
secondly, in the course of my psychoanalytic practice; thirdly, in the course
of the experimental work at Maimonides and, most recently, in the informal
dream sharing sessions conducted over the past several years at the A.S.P.R. The
earliest were by far the most powerful and most lasting. They remain deeply
embedded in my psyche, a continuing source of wonderment and mystery and
unanswered questions pertaining not to their actuality as paranormal
experiences but to their nature. I remain, a half century later, just as
unresolved as I was then as to any particular explanatory point of view.

The
psychoanalytic experiences reawakened that sense of excitement and challenge.
They convinced me that we do possess an ability, perhaps developed unevenly in
the population, of tapping into our psi abilities in the interest of working
our interpersonal tensions.

My feelings
are mixed about the outcome of the experimental dream studies. On the one hand
I think we were able to induce telepathic and precognitive dreaming under
well-controlled laboratory conditions. On the other hand the price we paid for orienting our work
toward quantitative results led away from rather than toward any deeper
understanding of the phenomena we were dealing with. The free
wheeling pilot studies carried out in the fifties under the auspices of the
Parapsychological Foundation were trulyexciting,
raising as they did the possibility of an experimental approach. Being an
active participant, inspired enough to stay up all night to monitor the dreams
of the sleeping subject and witnessing the dramatic correspondences between the
drawings and pictures we used as targets and the subject's dreams generated a
sense of involvement, immediacy and spontaneity that was impossible to
replicate when following a pre-ordered experimental protocol. The results far
exceeded my expectations. They certainly influenced my decision to give up
practice and move into a situation where further research would be possible.

Once we
began to formalize the approach and introduce all the constraints necessary for
a tight methodology we did succeed in getting statistically significant results
but, to put it simply, the fun was gone. It became another well-controlled
parapsychological experiment designed to add further laboratory proof of the
reality of psi. I was involved in proving rather than
investigating the paranormal dream. The responsibility for running a
department of psychiatry and a developing community mental health center
diverted my energies and distanced me from the actual experimental work.
Interested as I was I no longer felt as personally involved as I was during the
pilot phase of the work.

My most
recent pursuit of the paranormal dream began in the late seventies and came
about in conjunction with my growing interest in group dream work. I again went
back to an informal exploratory approach using a small group process in which
dream sharing and experiential dream work took place. This opened up the
possibility of seeking out psi correspondences through the sharing of both
daytime and nocturnal experiences. Based on the encouraging results we obtained
I feel that studies such as this pursued over a period of time can add a
significant longitudinal developmental dimension as well as adding to our
awareness of some of the psychological factors involved. It represents an
attempt at cultivating psi in a natural and evolving interpersonal field.

On
rereading what I have written I realize how one-sided this account has been.
Biased by my own experiences I became an explorer from within outward. Since I
started with a deep conviction and an intuitive sense of the circumstances I
consider favorable toward psi I gravitated toward what might be congruent with
that approach bypassing on the way more or less other experimental approaches
and theoretical possibilities. These I have left for others.

Bibliography for Montague Ullman

(1949).
On the nature of psi processes. Journal of Parapsychology, 13, 1.

(1950).
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Reinhold.

Montague Ullman

Montague Ullman, M.D.,
noted psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, re­searcher, educator, and author, has been
involved in psychic investigation for most of his life. He founded the Dream
Laboratory at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, and has
been devoted since then to dream research and the development of group
approaches to dream work here and abroad. At present he is clinical professor
of psychiatry, Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Dr. Ullman is a past
president of the Parapsychological Association and of the American Society for
Psychical Research. He is a life fellow of the American Psychiatric
Association and a charter fellow of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis.